Guest speaker profiles: 

Brian Sweeney is Chairman of SweeneyVesty, an international strategic communications consultancy he founded with Jane Vesty in New Zealand in 1987 and now with offices in London, New York, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington. The company works with corporations and organizations on long term purpose, positioning, and reputation. He is co-founder with Kevin Roberts of the New Zealand Edge, a project created in 1998 to explore ideas about New Zealand’s international identity and to stimulate diaspora networks. He has a degree in Politics from Waikato University and prior to SweeneyVesty he was a producer in entertainment, the arts, and film. He attended his first TED conference in 1994, and is currently a co-presenter of the film The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls which opens in the USA on May 13. 

Claudia Batten - Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Victors & Spoils, the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on 'crowdsourcing' principles, helping businesses solve their marketing, advertising and product-design problems by engaging the world’s most talented creatives. Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Victors & Spoils, the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on 'crowdsourcing' principles, helping businesses solve their marketing, advertising and product-design problems by engaging the world’s most talented creatives.

Former founding team member of Massive which created a dynamic system for delivering advertising into video games. Worked as in-house counsel and business development then on building the publishing/content side of the business. The company was sold to Microsoft in 2006.

Over 13 years’ experience in the technology sector, including four years as a corporate attorney specialising in contract and technology law.

Has worked with large corporations in telecommunications, banking and biotechnology, providing advice on technology supply, licensing, outsourcing and a variety of general commercial contracts, including tendering, reselling and consumer contracts.

 

Derek Handley - Co-founded mobile marketing and media company The Hyperfactory in 2001. It set the global benchmark and trends, breaking new ground in the emerging mobile industry as the most awarded mobile agency in the world. Sold the business to NYSE-listed, Meredith Corporation in 2010.

Co-founding limited partner in mobile seed venture fund, Eniac Ventures; Founder of angel investment firm, The Mint Limited; and investment fund, Illiad Partners.

Co-founder of luxury basics cashmere label, To Sir With Love; KidiCorp Group, formerly NZX-listed childcare operator; and online betting business, Feverpitch (formerly listed on NZX ‘NCM’ Market).

Served on the jury for the D&AD Awards, Mobile category and jury for the Global Mobile Marketing Association Awards (2006-2009). Active speaker on entrepreneurship, marketing and digital.

Jonty Kelt started his career in investment banking with Macquarie Bank before co-founding Europe's first internet affiliate network in 1999, based in London. 

In 2001 he was part of the founding team that launched a Chinese sports and entertainment events business, based in Shanghai.  From 2004 to 2009 Jonty led DoubleClick’s search technology and services businesses in Europe and Asia, through its acquisition by Google. 

In 2010 he co-founded groupcommerce.com, a group-buying and social commerce platform built to enable large media companies to participate in the fast-growing ecommerce market. 

Group Commerce has raised $8m in funding, has 35 staff based in four US cities, and serves clients including DailyCandy, Thrillist, Meredith Publishing and The New York Times. 

Jonty is an active angel investor, currently holding investments in early stage media and technology businesses in USA, Europe, China and Australia.  He holds Bachelors degrees from Otago University, New Zealand.

Michael Boustridge - World Class New Zealand Award Winner 2011.  Michael ran a multi-billion services operation in more than 170 countries, managing and leading British Telecom’s (BT) relationships and business with multi-national corporations worldwide.

BT Global Services helps multi-site organizations to master the complexity of business communication. It serves corporate and government customers worldwide and wholesale customers outside the UK.

BT Global Services provides a range of specialist network-centric propositions and practices spanning high performance networking, applications management, outsourcing and managed services, and business transformation.

BT Global Services provides networked IT services for the world’s largest corporations.

Michael also is a Public Board Director of Riverbed ( www.riverbed.com) - Riverbed Technology is the IT performance company for networks, applications, and storage.
Riverbed® provides the only comprehensive WAN optimization solutions to a host of problems that prevent enterprises from sharing applications and data across wide-area networks anywhere in the world.

As a recognized global leader he also sits on the board of XPRIZE Foundation (www.xprize.org ) as a trustee.  XPRIZE is an educational not-for-profit that attempts to solve the grand challenges of our time by offering incentive prizes of $10 million or more.  

Michael uses every opportunity, and every contact, to promote New Zealand, specifically its agility, innovative and leading edge technical and software development skills.

Before joining BT, Michael was the Chief Sales and Marketing officer for EDS - later acquired by HP where he joined EDS ( formally the GCS (Government Computing Service) and Databank ) in New Zealand

Michael is an avid rugby fan and enjoys motorcycle riding in his spare time. He lives in Dallas, Texas